In an environment for centralized management of desktops, multiple client machines may receive access to or execute a computing environment based on copies of a single “golden master” desktop disk image. A machine disk image or desktop disk image may be an image of an operating system (OS), and may include sets of applications and customizations representing a working environment for a user. In some environments, a machine image includes files used to execute a virtual machine (VM) that then executes an operating system or other user applications. In other environments, a desktop image includes files used to execute an operating system or other user application, and either a physical machine or a virtual machine may execute the desktop image. An image of a machine or desktop may be generally referred to as a base disk image.
Generally speaking, two approaches are used for machine deployment. The first approach is machine streaming by utilizing network boot technology to stream an operating system and workload on demand over a network. While the approach provides “instant gratification” to endpoints without a significant wait time, it requires that the machine maintains constant network connection.
The second approach is machine image cloning, such as by utilizing an xcopy operation to copy a machine image to each endpoint. Once the image is deployed to each endpoint, it is a distributed computing model. While this allows the endpoint to perform offline computing after image deployment, it also requires a relatively long down time for the initial image transfer.